


Through a Glass

by Orockthro



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Character, Book 4: The Mauritius Command, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 23:45:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4325457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Stephen reflected upon Sophie’s confinement.” / “Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn, you lose your husband to his natural element.”</i><br/>-The Mauritius Command - Patrick O’Brian</p>
<p>She yearns to leave the window open but is terrified one or the other of the children will topple out from it. And so she sits, holding Fanny, rocking her, and looking out the bolted window, through the wavering glass that blurs and warps the world. Unlike Jack’s telescopes, it does not bring her clarity or comfort, only obfuscation. She can’t see the sea from here, but she knows without a doubt exactly where it lays, at what bearing and what distance. Knows for the creaking in the wood when her husband leaves their bed to climb to his observatory and gaze out upon it, when her ability to please him falls short of his expectations. How odd they should both look at the world through a glass and see it so differently.</p>
<p><i>(Or, Sophie, set in the beginning of </i> The Mauritius Command<i> contemplates her family and her life.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Through a Glass

**Author's Note:**

> I am very much still getting a feel for Sophie's character. I hope I have done her justice; I have every intention of writing her more. I am only just starting the second chapter of The Mauritius Command, and do not have hard copies to reference, so forgive any gross misuse.

_“Stephen reflected upon Sophie’s confinement.” / “Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn, you lose your husband to his natural element.”_

_-The Mauritius Command - Patrick O’Brian_

Sophie looks between her children. They are so very small and sweet, with their little upturned noses and full, healthy cheeks. She has none of her husband’s fears about them; they will be strong children, she can tell already, although she did not find their birth easy. They represent everything she hoped for in marriage: a husband who loves her a great deal, a small home and a parcel of land that, while not lavish, are presently acceptable, and his attention. It is the last that she tumbles over in her mind like a sore, constantly poking and prodding it and causing herself only more pain.

One of her girls toddles towards her, the baby’s frock falling half undone; they are growing quite fast. It is Charlotte, she is reasonably sure. She picks up the child and hums a tune she remembers from her own infancy, sung not by her mother but by a beloved governess. She loves her children, truly. They are a comfort to her in ways her husband is not. Cannot be, as much as that pains her. She longs for his heart to belong to her, but it is at sea when he is not, and at home with her when he is at sea. It’s a cursed existence they live, Jack’s affections towards domesticity so dependent upon his being far away from it.

“But you’re a good child, aren’t you my dear,” she says. It’s not Charlotte. She can see that now. Fanny and her look so similar, but there are minute differences; the curl of one baby’s hair towards the left and the other towards the right, the soft pudge that demonstrates more clearly on one child than the other. She is their mother, and she can tell them apart after a good look, even if Jack can’t.  

The nursery is low-ceilinged, far more low-ceilinged than the rest of the house, which already dwarfs against Jack’s frame. He barely fits up here without stooping his shoulders and standing only in the tallest corner, and Sophie spends most of her time here alone, occasionally accompanied by her mother, but most frequently by herself. The air is stale and reeks of boiled cloth and lemons, wafting up from the kitchen and laundry below. She yearns to leave the window open but is terrified one or the other of the children will topple out from it. And so she sits, holding Fanny, rocking her, and looking out the bolted window, through the wavering glass that blurs and warps the world. Unlike Jack’s telescopes, it does not bring her clarity or comfort, only obfuscation. How odd they should both look at the world through a glass and see it so differently.

She can’t see the sea from here, but she knows without a doubt exactly where it lays, at what bearing and what distance. Knows for the creaking in the wood when her husband leaves their bed to climb to his observatory and gaze out upon it, when her ability to please him falls short of his expectations.

Fanny wriggles in her arms, and she sets her down to go play with her sister.

How she would love to be like Diana, and please a man in bed. Perhaps, then, Jack would not be so drawn to return to the sea. But the notion sends a shudder through her, and although she does her best to keep Jack happy, for it is her wifely duty, it is not a pleasant one. He is frequently malcontented with her apathy, although he tries to keep it from her, and she is frequently malcontented by her nature. Oh, to be more like Diana.

But she is not like Diana, and the love between a man and a woman holds only the simplest joy for her, and that is in the children she gets from it. Nothing more.

Her dowry is gone, lost to her mother’s greedy nature and a villainous money keeper. All she has is Jack, her children, and this small cottage. Jack’s prison. And when he is in it, it becomes her prison, too, trapped by his unhappiness.

She loves him, truly and completely. As much as she longs for him to be the sort of man who enjoys domestic affairs, he is not. And all the wanting in the world will not change that, just as it will not change her exceptionally minimal desire to lie with him, love him as she does.

She feels wretched for even thinking these things. She loves Jack, wants the world for him, is indignant that he must stay here when he doesn’t wish to, that his career is being stifled. But she also cannot stand his touch late at night, and hates it when he slinks out of bed like some sort of wraith to go stare at the sea. He claims he stares at the stars, but she is not a fool. No woman can be, if she wishes to do right by herself. Jack stares at the sea, not his children, and so it is only right that she does everything in her power to remove him to it once more. She will speak to Stephen about it tomorrow.

Charlotte giggles, and Fanny giggles, and Sophie smiles at them as they topple over one another, free from all of this concern. She has her children, and Jack will have his sea, and perhaps in their distance, they will have one another once more.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are Love


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